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Sunday, February 12, 2017

SOCIAL MEDIA SPECIAL ............How To Quit Your Social Media Addiction (Even If It's Part Of Your Job)

How To Quit Your Social Media Addiction (Even If It's Part Of Your Job)

If social media is
killing your productivity or making you depressed, it can be life-changing to
cut back. Here's how.

Conventional wisdom says
that Max Soni should be all over social media. He's the founder of DotComSEO, a digital marketing and search engine
optimization company that, among other things, tells clients how to use social
media. So it stands to reason that Soni should have a robust following on many
platforms.

But that’s not the case. Roughly 18 months ago, he logged off. He
may log on to one of his profiles to check out a new platform feature when it’s
rolled out, but otherwise, he’s not liking, tweeting, posting, or even peeking
at social media.

"I found it was really polarizing," Soni says. "The
anonymity social media affords you makes it so people are more inclined to say
drastic things." He found that the negativity was affecting him—some of
the things strangers said would even stick in his head, he says—so he decided
he was done. And the result has been remarkable, he says. In addition to
feeling more positive overall, he says that thoughts previously taken up by
something he read online were released. It gave him additional time and
headspace to devote to new ideas and ventures.

"It's widely accepted
that in creative fields, social media followers are the key to getting your
work noticed," says Cal Newport,
associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, and author
of Deep Work: Rules for
Focused Success in a Distracted World. "This is overblown.
Good work gets noticed, even if you didn't send a tweet about it; bad work is
ignored, even if you sent thousands. I can't tell you how many different
artists and writers, for example, have written me to talk about how leaving
social media had zero impact on their sales and huge impact on their
well-being," Newport says.

That pretty much describes
actor Brian Colonna, artistic director and owner of the Buntport
Theater Company. Colonna cops to having a social media account for
the theater company, but it’s mainly just to push out information about shows.
He doesn’t use social media to promote himself as an actor, read status
updates, or read news. The downside to disconnecting, he says, is that he’s not
privy to the events and parties that are planned online. However, he says it
forces him to maintain regular contact with his friends and relatives, versus
the casual digital connections that pass for relationships on social media, he
says. Those people keep him informed of what he needs to know, he says.

Not ready to go cold
turkey? Even disconnecting for a short time has benefits. "Being away for
a month allows the brain time to create new neural pathways, which means new
behaviors and routines begin to replace old ones," says Sanam Hafeez, a faculty
member at Columbia University, inaFast Companypost.
"So if you typically reached for your phone when you woke up to check
Facebook, after 30 days, you would have adopted a new ritual, which is the new
normal."

In a world where part of your value is the number of followers,
likes, and other engagement you have on social media, it’s tough to imagine how
you can live without it. However, streams of fake news, argumentative posters,
and photos of OPM (other people’s meals), social media sites can range from
being a huge time-suck to having ill effects on your mental health. Newport
argues that, for most people, there are better ways to spend your time. If
you’re feeling like social media is taking up too much time or energy—or if you
just want to quit—try these steps.

Take the apps off your
phone.

"These apps are highly
engineered to be addictive, and your phone keeps them readily available at all
points," Newport says. If you simply remove them from your phone, you can
still access the platform on your laptop or desktop, but you’re not carrying
around the constant temptation to check in.

"I've noticed, however, that when many people try this
experiment, they discover that they almost never login to these services on
their computer. The fact that it wasn't immediately available was enough to
prevent them from bothering—a strong sign that these services are often more an
addictive crutch than we admit," he says.

Set ground rules.

If you are in a business
that requires you to use social media, set boundaries based on those needs,
says time management and efficiency consultant Helene Segura, author of The Inefficiency
Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Harder. Set
aside a specific time of day and time limit to handle your social media tasks,
then log off. Once you experiment with the best time of day and the best amount
of time to spend, you may be motivated to cut back in other areas.

"If you're finding that you can still produce the same amount
of revenue and business by only spending an hour a day on social media versus
six hours a day, then you can use that as motivation to realize, well, where
else can I be using my time?" she says.

Colonna says he has friends who have "no social media"
at home so they’re not distracted from spending time together.

Find work-arounds, if you
must.

Sometimes your work role
requires you to be on social media from time to time. But you can find
solutions that don’t plunge you down the rabbit hole. Colonna strictly limits
his time on social media to theater company business. While he removed the
social media platform app, Soni keeps Facebook’s Messenger app on his phone so
he can text everyone with whom he’s connected on the platform, making it easy
to connect.

Gather
reinforcements.

You might have to wean
yourself off of social media in increments. First, cut back to checking at
certain times of day, then scale back those times until you’ve kicked your
habit, Segura suggests. Tell others about the transition and the best ways to
get in touch with you. And, if you have trouble staying off, use reinforcements
like Freedom or Anti-Social.